The present invention relates to a removable through-panel mounted component, for example, an electrical or opto-electronic module to which connections are made when the module is plugged into a receptacle in a panel.
Many types of devices have a panel with apertures, gaps or slots through which a component may be mounted to the device. The present invention is concerned with the case when electrical and/or optical connections are made between the device and the component when the component is removably connected to the device through an aperture, slot, gap, or other such discontinuity in an accessible surface, face or other such panel of the device. Such components are referred to herein as xe2x80x9cremovable through-panel mounted componentsxe2x80x9d.
After such a connection of the component to the device, it may be necessary to remove the component from the device, for example, if the component develops a fault, or if the device needs to be reconfigured with different components.
With increasing integration and sophistication of electronic or opto-electronic modules, there may be many electrical or optical connections between the device and component when these are connected together. In some applications, it is desirable to have many such components mounted close together, for example in a close-packed two-dimensional array of similar components mounted through a planar front panel of a 19xe2x80x3 rack-mounted device. It is also generally desirable for the sake of compactness for the components not to protrude unduly from a panel. These factorsxe2x80x94closely packed components, a large number of electrical and/or optical connections, and low protruding componentsxe2x80x94makes it ever more difficult to disconnect and extract a component when this has to be demounted from the device. While it may always be possible to provide specialist tools to facilitate removal of the component from the device, this may be perceived as inconvenient by the user of the device, particularly if a device has to be quickly replaced.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a more convenient removable through-panel mounted component.
According to the invention, there is provided a through-panel apparatus, comprising a device with at least one through-panel receptacle, and at least one component, said component being removably mounted to the device by inserting the component through said receptacle, both the device and said component mounted to the device having electrical and/or optical connections between the device and said component, said connections being made when said component is mounted to the device and broken when said component is demounted from the device, and said connections requiring in order to be broken the application of an extraction force in a direction opposite to that of insertion of the device through the receptacle, characterised in that the component has a sprung mechanism that is biased against the device when an insertion force is applied to said component along the direction of insertion during mounting of said component to the device, the biasing of the sprung mechanism then providing a spring bias force that contributes to said required extraction force to aid extraction of said component from the receptacle when said component is to be demounted from the device.
The sprung mechanism therefore stores energy exerted during insertion and mounting of the component to the device in order to reduce the forces that need to applied externally of the device in order to demount the component.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the component when inserted into the receptacle engages slideably with the device along a pair of rails, said spring bias force then acting in a direction that lies in a plane defined by the sliding orientation of said rails. This provides the benefit that the extraction force provided by the sprung mechanism is acting in the most efficient manner. In this way, all the force provided by the sprung mechanism may be available to assist the sliding motion of the device along the rails.
One economical way in which rails can be formed is by using for the rails printed circuit board edges, preferably opposing edges of a single printed circuit board.
The opposing edges will be separated by a gap, which then may provide an opening in the plane of the circuit board into which said component is inserted when mounted to the device.
Opposite this opening another edge of the circuit board may extend between the rails thereby spanning this gap between said pair of rails.
The spring bias force may act against an edge of the printed circuit board, for example, the edge of the circuit board that spans the gap between the pair of rails.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the component may have a pair of tracks, each rail being slideably engaged in one of said tracks. At least one of the tracks may be used to make one or more electrical contacts from the component to the device when the component is mounted to the device. With components using radio-frequency signals, it is particularly advantageous if the tracks are used to make ground contacts for grounding an external chassis of the component.
One form of sprung mechanism is bumper-type spring that extends across an outer surface of said component. This type of spring is compressed by contact with an end stop surface of the device as the component is mounted to the device. The tracks can then be connected together by the sprung mechanism.
The sprung mechanism may include one or more helical springs or a resilient strip that is deformed to store energy as the component is mounted to the device.